


The Wealth of Nations

by boomvroomshroom



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, He is capitalist Lenin, Historical References, Petyr is actually smart, Petyr is not evil Jay Gatsby, The fall of feudalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 19:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7695919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boomvroomshroom/pseuds/boomvroomshroom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"A picture of me on the Iron Throne, and you by my side."</i>
</p><p>But even that was a lie. How could it not be? A man like Petyr Baelish could hardly be expected to be so uncreative. The ambitions of the nobles of Westeros ended at the Iron Throne, but Petyr could see further than they ever could.</p><p>He wasn't going to break the wheel. He was going to burn it to the ground and rule over the ashes. Hundreds of kings came and went, but he alone fathered a revolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wealth of Nations

"He changed the path of the future more than anyone of Aegon the Conqueror's line. The War of Five Kings was his masterstroke, and it was he who Neicolo Macchevelle modeled his most famous work after. Indeed, no one who has ever taken a business or political science class today has not heard his name."

 -- Marjery Aeryn, _History's Five Most Influential Figures_

 

Contrary to what Sansa thinks, he's not going to kill Jon Snow to further his own means. Not when a unified North is paramount to combat the growing threat of the Others. A little bit of death and destruction is fine, as long as the ice things didn't win outright. Petyr is allergic to dying, thank you very much.

So while sweet Sansa frets – she's learned to play the game well, but not nearly as well as he, and of course Jon is as hopeless as Robb or Eddard – he focuses on other things. The survival of Jon doesn't mean anything to him at all, but if his wellbeing will distract Sansa, the one person left in the world (apart from Varys) who _might_ figure out what he's _really_ up to, Petyr's all for it.

All of the Great Houses, and many of the lesser ones, have all gone, or are about to go extinct, at least in name. The Baratheons are broken, save for Robert's many bastards. The Tullys are similarly near-gone. Sweetrobin wouldn't make it through the winter. The combined forces of the Tyrells (disappearing), Martells (Sands now), Greyjoys (who cared about them?), et cetera would rip out the Lannisters root and stem.

The Rains of Casterly Rock.

He doesn't want to see Sansa die, though not for the (perverted) reasons everyone thinks. Not that he's done much to disabuse that notion. If his opponents believe Sansa's love and beauty to be his one true weakness, let them. The more incorrect his enemies' beliefs about him are, the better. On his end, he got over Catelyn years ago. Looking back, she wasn't that special anyway. A silly, spoiled, self-entitled little princess like the rest of them.

But Sansa has to live for now, for the same reason Jon Snow-Stark has to − because the North is a particularly tricky nut to crack. Whereas in the south, the serfs would gladly unchain themselves from their liege lords, there's less of a middle class available here. Unlike the others, the Starks were personally loved by the peasants. No one in their right mind would vote a Lannister back into power, but the Starks were the type to win popular support, either in their old world or his new one.

Daenerys Targaryen, going around freeing slaves. How cute. She was an amateur compared to him.

Let the Others take her. Let the Others take them all.

Petyr, of course, was in Essos at this point, watching the chaos unfold from his grandfather's homeland of Braavos. The trick to gambling is to make sure you win either way. He would _prefer_ that the living won, because the Others were very bad for business (the undead didn't need anything, after all). But if his plans failed, Westeros was not a small continent, and it would take the damn things many, many years to take it over completely. And many more years still before they figured out how to cross the Narrow Sea. By then, he would be dead of old age, and to hell with the rest of the world, because he didn't care. He had more than enough money to live out the rest of his life in peace.

But things do end up going his way, and the King in the North pulls through with the help of magical Targaryen blood and dragons and some other magic he doesn't understand. The point is, magic. Petyr has always hated magic, the one thing he and Varys agree about on principle. It's bloody unfair, and it's the one gap in his intelligence that he'll never be able to fix.

Luckily, the rest of what he knows is enough to trump any magic out there.

 

"For thousands of years, society and economy revolved around land and titles. 298 A.C. was the beginning of the end, and he was there to see it through."

\-- Robb Snow, _The Rise and Fall of Feudalism in Westeros_

 

Between the War of the Five Kings and the Winter War, more than a third of the population lay dead. With so few laborers available, peasants are finally getting a say in their own salary. The highborn quickly become unsustainable – Westeros is so annihilated that only those who worked could eat. Before, those men had power because they were trained to hold a sword, or had the money to hire people to fight for them – but in the face of a professionally equipped and salaried standing army, it hardly matters.

That is when he comes back to save the day. His great mind put to use, he reorganizes the fiefs, encloses the pastures, moves the economy from land to money and industry, and puts the power in the hands of more people like him. People of great minds, but low birth. Not as good as him, but they, too, have had experience in dealing with power. Only, unlike the high lords, they know what it means, to have worked for it.

For to be King over a realm of ashes means nothing, and to be highborn or a knight means even less. Starved men are all the same, with or without a crown on their head.

By some miracle, the majority of books and knowledge survive the Others' attack. Birth records, on the other hand, do not, and so the rule against educating peasants become useless. The number of schools and the literacy rate spike, and with education comes progress.

In a great stroke of irony, these new universities are housed in the famous ancestral seats of old. He can just imagine the proud houses of the Vale frothing in fury when the bloody gates of the Eyrie fall open to house all sorts of commoners, who sit and receive the same fostering as the proud veins of old.

The power of the nobility is forever broken.

He hadn't even needed to kill them. The ones who swallowed their pride are now putting their literacy to good use in management. The ones who didn't…they had starved themselves.

It didn't matter whether or not Sansa (Stark) or Daenerys (Targaryen) or Jon Snow (Stark? Targaryen?) lived or died. In the end those family names became forgotten footnotes in history. They held no more power. Not anymore. If they were unlucky, then they would have died alongside the rest when the Others came. If they were lucky (and smart), then they were now living among their fellow men, as equals, earning their keep, rather than relying on the smallfolk to do it for them.

They're gone. They're all gone. Targaryen or Baratheon, Lannister or Stark; in the end those names hold as much weight as the name of Jeyne Crofter, the miller's daughter.

Slowly, Westeros rebuilds. He rebuilds with them. In his own fashion.

The smallfolk still don't have much choice in their lives, not yet – but their children will, one day. Bright young things with bigger dreams than the lot in life they were born to, whose skills with numbers make them stronger than any sword arm. They remind him of himself as a boy.

Now the new Great Houses are not long lines of nobles, but self-raised businessmen like him, leaders of corporations, who have earned their own wealth and power rather than being born into it. If their children end up spoiled, squandering their father's fortunes, let them. There will always be newer blood, newer money, smarter opportunists, to take their place. As things should be. People are loyal to money, to power, to intelligence, not a spoiled brat's vague relation to his infinitely more hardworking and talented ancestors from a century ago.

(The children of now will never know what it meant to be fully beholden to a liege lord – of course, factory overseers were hardly better, but that was for a different story, a different time, and anyway, factory overseers couldn't force conscription in the military.)

They are his legacy. They are what will make Westeros _his_ , even as he sits without a throne and dies in a humble cottage by the sea.

Tywin Lannister is an amateur, too.

 

"Whether it was the destruction of the nobility, the toppling of feudalism, or the introduction of capitalism, he had a hand in all of it. He was ahead of his time in that, rather than competing with the highborn in a power game he could never hope to win, entirely restructured it to give himself the greatest advantage."

\-- Joan Martel, _The Reconstruction_

 

Every once in awhile, when he does take the time to visit the great cities – holding far more people than King's Landing ever did, but better organized so that they no longer stink − he sees a flash of red hair. A girl with red hair, working for pay, washing dishes in a tavern or stacking wood paste in the new papermaking shops or helping light the gas lanterns on the streets when the sun went down. It's not Sansa, though. It was never Sansa, and anyway, she would have been in her thirties or forties by now.

"Sansa is gone. You should get over it," Varys tells him over tea.

(There are rumors, though. That new lands have been discovered beyond the Sunset Sea. And that red-haired children are starting to appear among the dark-haired locals.)

"I already have." Petyr traces the scar on his chest, from that boyhood duel, so long ago. "I got over it before she was even born."

They are two old, old men by now, watching the fruit of their labors from an ivory tower. Whereas in their youth, they tirelessly worked to destroy each other, they now regard the world with a resigned amusement. And how could they not? They've both gone so far, seen too much, for them to take things seriously anymore. Neither of them have much time left, but surviving is worth it, just to see how quickly the world is changing. It's frankly quite fascinating.

They don't stop playing, though. They never stop playing.

"My little birds tell me of another song, however," Varys mentions. "Jon Snow lives. Still."

Petyr raises an eyebrow. "Snow? Not Stark, or Targaryen?"

Varys shrugs. "You said so yourself; those names mean nothing anymore. Better to return to his true self, than to grasp for a title that would only draw unwanted attention in your new world."

Eddard Stark would have clung to the old ways of honor until the bitter end. He'd expected Jon Stargerysnow to die as well, the moment the Crown of Winter lost its power, but apparently, he'd willingly shed that burden and happily joined the tide of the future. Perhaps Jon is more pragmatic and intelligent than Petyr gave him credit for.

Varys tells him that Jon and a former maester from the disbanded Night's Watch had invented a machine that made copying books faster. Now they were working on a machine that could make weaving more efficient with the help of his younger sister, who always hated sewing and was jumping at a chance to make it so she'd no longer have to touch another bolt of cloth again.

(Arya, not Sansa. Sansa is still missing. Not that he cares.)

So that was it, then. Petyr admits, he's a little surprised, at how quickly and impressively the rest of mankind recovered. How, despite everything he has ever done, there are people out there who genuinely want to make the world a better place. Maybe those damn Starks knew something he didn't, after all.

"I must admit, I'm impressed," Varys says, sidling up to him. "I'm not even mad anymore, losing to you. I served the realm…I never dreamed of the realm becoming this, though."

Petyr smiles. It's a genuine smile, though not a kind one. "You know as well as I that I don't care about the happiness of the smallfolk," he interrupts, before Varys can mention it. "But I see no reason to put an end to a pleasant side effect."

He fondly shoots a glance at his pendulum clock. He's always despised wasting time, and thanks to this new timekeeping device he no longer has to. Life is definitely more convenient, now that power is in the hands of businessmen and engineers – people who actually have the imagination to make life more convenient – not pampered nobles born into privilege.

"Was it worth it?" Varys asks him.

Petyr shrugs at his…enemy? Rival? Friend? Cyvasse opponent? "It matters not. The world is always moving forward. Those who cling to the old ways instead of adapting cannot make it. That is not any human threat, only a fact of life. Even a dragon will die if it refuses to abandon its fallow hunting grounds out of tradition."

Varys muses upon this. "I suppose watching the world burn was highly entertaining, though."

Petyr doesn't deny it.

"It was."

 

"Though future historians will claim differently, Petyr Baelish was not a defender of the people. His goal was, and always had been, chaos and destruction. But when humanity showed him, in their collective immortal spirit, their refusal to be defeated, he had no choice but step back and observe what beauty could arise from the ashes he created. It was then that the mockingbird was murdered by the phoenix."

\-- _Unknown_

 

**Author's Note:**

> _"Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next."_
> 
> I thought that line from the TV show revealing that Petyr Baelish wanted to sit the Iron Throne just like everyone else was boring. Everyone wants the Iron Throne; that's not hard to comprehend.
> 
> _"I'm not going to fight them. I'm going to fuck them."_
> 
> But not even Varys could have foreseen a complete overhaul of the entire continent (the unknown quote at the end is his, by the way). And I think that's what someone of Baelish's ambition would want to do. He recognizes that his enemy does not merely lie in the nobles, but in the entire system. 
> 
> Keep in mind, he's not doing this "for the smallfolk" or out of the goodness of his own heart. His true purpose was to hurt everyone. It just ended up turning out for the better in the long run, and the books represent him positively because the victors write history.
> 
> *Historical analogies, in terms of impact: War of Five Kings ~ Crusades. White Walker invasion ~ Black Death. Reconstruction ~ Renaissance. Neicolo Macchevelle ~ Niccolo Machiavelli. Sansa and Daenerys ~ a nicer version of Christopher Columbus. Samwell, Jon, and Arya ~ Johannes Gutenberg and England's early textile industry.


End file.
